Tablet cameras are destined to make the user look like a special kind of moron, but in the interests of personal choice Surface is equipped with a 5MP rear camera capable and a VGA front-facing lens. Both can also capture video, both of which can capture 800p video in 16:10 and 720p in 16:9.

This is low spec for a modern tablet, and the result is slightly grainy pictures that are unsuited to proper photography.

We found that close-up shots couldn't focus, and in dim lighting conditions our shots became noisy. What's more, there's no flash should you be snapping in dark conditions.

However, when there's an abundance of natural light the quality of shots improves, as you can see from our fetching cat in the above photograph, which is available from all good Turkish bazaars.

Video was better and maintained a decent frame rate at 800p, but the bulk of the tablet, the grainy quality and the effort of firing up the app from the Start-screen tile, before switching into video mode is such that we can't see anyone bothering to capture those impromptu memories on their Surface.

We'd have liked to have seen a better front-facing camera which would be used for chatting via Skype or other messaging apps, but it does nearly as good a job as the rear camera, and the quality is good enough for chatting to friends and family on the web.

In terms of modes, there are few options to tweak your settings or macro modes, though there is a timer feature to snap group shots.